Saturday, March 9, 2013

Bill Gates didn’t mince words last night when sharing with the IHS CERAWeek crowd his thoughts about public support for basic scientific research in the United States.
“It’s an incredible travesty that we’re spending so little,” he said.
Delivering the final evening keynote for the energy conference in Houston on Thursday, Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, exhorted the energy industry to renew its focus on research and, especially, public support of science.
The energy sector, he said, spends too much on projects and too little on research and development. The U.S. energy budget, he said, ought to be doubled, which would mean an additional $8 billion in federal spending.